Poker seems likely to be around to stay

By Pete Dougherty Staff writer

Published 1:00 am, Friday, July 24, 2009

"Pocket rockets," "suited connectors" and "going all in" weren't conventional phrases before Y2K, but the recent poker explosion has a lot of TV junkies in tune with the sport's terminology. And the momentum doesn't seem to be waning.

ESPN begins its seventh season of the "World Series of Poker" on Tuesday night, beginning a 16-week run that will incorporate a record 24 original hours and tons of reruns before the Main Event final table Nov. 10.

"They were playing it a whole lot before ESPN came along with the World Series of Poker," said Norman Chad, a syndicated columnist (for the Times Union, among others) who serves as the network's poker analyst, "but now it's as much of the mainstream as 'Seinfeld' reruns or 'American Idol' or the 'Today' show."

What's remarkable is that a network can edit an event in Las Vegas with thousands of players into a slick production that most anyone can understand.

"We tape everything," ESPN coordinating producer Jamie Horowitz said. "It is hours upon hours of (production) time in New York City, going through the logs and trying to recreate the tournament.

"It's a funny project to work on because you reverse-engineer the way you produce good television. You have to wait till the end. You have to wait to see who ended up at the final table, and then you want to try to find all their hands to see if you can tell a proper narrative."

Lon McEachern (pronounced "Mik-CAR-rin"), who has applied his voice to everything from X-Games to kickboxing for ESPN, has the role of leading viewers through the mayhem of antes, blinds and raises while keeping the focus on what the network believes is its poker niche, which is storytelling.

"They've got photographers and producers on the floor who are responsible for certain areas," McEachern said. "You try to get big hands and you try to cover as much territory as you can."

"What we try to create," Horowitz added, "is to allow each of these shows to be able to stand alone, that you could randomly watch show 16 and feel like you were introduced to the big characters in the show. We detail what happened along their journey in that hour, then we pay it off at the end of letting you know how their day finished."

Along the way, you may seek pocket rockets (two aces in the hole), suited connectors (7-8 of hearts, or 4-5 of spades, for instance), which may prompt a player to go all in (betting his entire chip stack).

"I never could have anticipated that (popularity)," Chad said. "I don't think any of us did. The fact is that it did have a good backbone of interest before it exploded onto television. Between that and the Internet, it's probably here to stay for a long time."